Friday, October 12, 2007

While Government Dithers, The Private Sector Begins To Move

The Carbon Disclosure Project is the world's largest collaboration of institutional investors. It represents 315 global investors-including 30 based in Canada-that have an unprecedented $41 trillion in assets under management. In February, the CDP requested disclosure of relevant information about climate change and carbon risk management strategies from 2,400 companies around the world, including the 200 most valuable companies by market capitalization listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Here are some highlights from the Canadian version of the report (which can be downloaded from here for no charge if you create an account):

Many companies are still unwilling to provide the relevant information to investors:

Only 88 of Canada's 200 largest companies by market capitalization took part in this year's Carbon Disclosure Project questionnaire, a worldwide survey on how business is tackling the issue of climate change.

The participation rate was up 13 per cent, compared with 2006, but remains low by international standards, according to the Conference Board, which administered the survey on behalf of 315 of the world's biggest institutional investors with $41 trillion in assets under management.

Nevertheless, the issue is finally starting to get through, driven by investor interest and the looming introduction, federally and provincially, of new regulatory regimes.

Sixty-four per cent of respondents have a formal GHG emissions management system—either targeting emissions directly, or indirectly through energy efficiency and conservation...

Fifty-three per cent of respondents—and 65 per cent of those in high-carbon emissions impact sectors—indicate that their board of directors has responsibility for climate change. This suggests that climate change is increasingly viewed as both an operational and strategic issue warranting the highest level of oversight.

Government inaction is preventing action on the part of the private sector:

The continued lack of certainty in federal and provincial GHG policy and regulations was often cited as the basis for either not having conducted regulatory impact assessments or the inability to speculate on potential business implications.

In Alberta, for instance:

The province of Alberta estimates that, with its 12 per cent annual emissions intensity reduction target, the annual cost of compliance to industrial emitters sits at $177,000,000.
However... The newness of the regulation, the need to audit and identify baseline emissions, and continued uncertainty about some details of the plan were cited in company
responses as reasons for difficulty in speculating on the impact of increased regulation. For example, Nexen indicates in their CDP5 response that they have stopped running scenarios of the cost of compliance as the uncertainty range is too large.

You have to take your good news where you can find it, and it is abundantly clear from the very existence of the CDP that investors are beginning to demand of the corporate sector what governments are afraid to: accountability and action. In fact I think the sight of a Bush or a Harper on t.v. and dodging commitments can give an unduly negative impression. Offstage, the Greening of Capitalism proceeds apace.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

peeling the Goreacle onion, layer by layer.


It began when Al Gore was a young man...

In the fall of 1968 Al Gore claimed that he'd influenced the nomination acceptance speech of Hubert Humphrey through conversations with a Chicago Sun columnist. Al Gore asserted he was Humphrey's ghost writer, but the columnist said that he had nothing to do with that speech. Al Gore's claim wasn't true.

In 1987 Al Gore told the DesMoines Register as he began his Presidential campaign that his youthful reporting had led to the indictment and imprisonment of several people, but that wasn't true.

In August 1987 the Los Angeles Times reported that Gore had bragged that half of his Presidential Campaign staff were women, but it wasn't true.

In February of 1988 the Washington Post quoted Al Gore that he been shot at in Vietnam. It wasn't true. That claim was shot down by Newsweek in December of 1999.

In April 1988 Al Gore told a League of Women Voters gathering that he had written the law of Superfund. Recently he changed his story because the real author of the Superfund law was James Florio.

On October 30, 1992, Gore denied that there was a dump on his father's farm, but national television showed the pictures.

On January 24, 1997, regarding the Buddhist Temple event, Al Gore said on the Today Show that "I did not know it was a fundraiser."

On December 15, 1997, Time magazine reported that Al Gore claimed that he and Tipper had served as role models for the Eric Segal novel, Love Story. That wasn't true.

On March 9, 1999, Al Gore told Wolf Blitzer on CNN that "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." It wasn't true. The Department of Defense got the Internet underway in 1969. Al Gore was 21 in 1969.

On April 25, 1999, Al Gore told the Detroit chapter of the NAACP that his father was a fighter for civil rights, but he didn't tell them that his father had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

On June 1, 1999, at a Women for Gore event, Al Gore said he'd always been pro- choice, but that wasn't true. As a Congressman he had voted pro-life on many occasions.

On October 14, 1999, Al Gore's website proclaimed that he'd worked for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty for 20 years, but that claim wasn't true. As late as 1992 Al Gore had opposed that Treaty on the Senate floor.

On November 1, 1999, Time magazine reported that Al Gore had claimed to have authored the Earned Income Tax Credit. That wasn't true. The Earned Income Tax Credit was passed into law in 1975 and Al Gore didn't even enter Congress until 1977.

On November 24, 1999, The New York Times reported that Al Gore claimed to have been a co-sponsor of the McCain Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill. But Al Gore never served in the Senate with Senator Feingold. It wasn't true.

On December 23, 1999, ABC News reported that Al Gore flatly declared that "I live on a farm today." Al Gore lived then and he lives now at the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue in the District of Columbia. The Observatory is not a farm. Al Gore's statement wasn't true.

On February 4, 2000, The New York Times reported that Al Gore claimed to have spoken to a crowd of 3,000 people, but the room at which he spoke at had a maximum capacity of 1,200. It wasn't true.

On February 15, 2000, Al Gore asserted that he had never grown tobacco on the farm that he owned in Tennessee, but the Wall Street Journal in 1995 and Cox News Service in 1999 reported that tobacco had indeed been grown on that farm.

On April 11, 2000, Al Gore was reported by the Boston Globe to be trumpeting that he had his own meeting with Gorbachev, but the Globe reported that 26 other members of Congress had been present at that mass meeting. It just wasn't true.

In June of 2000 Al Gore said "I introduced the very first free t.v. legislation in the Senate in 1988," but more than 150 bills on that subject had been previously introduced in previous Congresses. It just wasn't true.

In his acceptance speech at the August Democratic Convention, Al Gore said that the Bush tax cut would benefit the middle class by only $.62 per week. But that wasn't true.

On August 28th Al Gore told a gathering of Florida seniors that his dog, Shilo, and his mother-in-law took the same arthritis drug, but that his mother-in-law paid three times as much as the dog did and that wasn't true. Al Gore won't even answer questions about whether his mother-in-law pays anything for her drugs.

At a convention of Teamsters on September 18th, Al Gore said that one of the lullabies of his that he'd been sung to as a child had been a union song. Then he sang a few words of it, but the song he sang hasn't written until Al Gore was in his 20s. It simply wasn't true.

On September 22nd Al Gore told the Associated Press that he'd been part of a discussions on strategic petroleum reserve since the days it was first established. But that reserve was established in 1975 and Al Gore did not enter Congress until 1977.

In the weekend before the first presidential debate, Al Gore complained that he had never been invited to appear on a PBS documentary about presidential debates. But PBS officials said they had indeed invited Al Gore and Al Gore's staff confirmed that he had rejected the invitation.

At the presidential debate on October 3, 2000, Al Gore claimed that a girl had to stand in the classroom of Sarasota High School and was still standing, but it wasn't true. The principal of the high school went on national television to say so.

In the same debate, Al Gore said that he'd worked with former President Ronald Reagan on defense issues, but that wasn't true. Al Gore had opposed Ronald Reagan on defense issues.

In the same debate, Al Gore was asked what had meant when he attacked Governor Bush as lacking the experience to be President. Al Gore told moderator Jim Lehrer he had never said such a thing, but he had. And so had his staff on many occasions. It wasn't true.

In the same debate, Al Gore said he took a risk in asking the former Prime Minister of Russia Chernomyrdin to become involved in negotiating an end of the conflict in Kosovo. The New York Times reported that the Russian President Yeltsin had designated Mr. Chernomyrdin as special envoy to the Balkans and had done so two weeks before Chernomyrdin had met with Mr. Gore. Mr. Gore's claim simply wasn't true.

In the same debate, Mr. Gore said that he'd accompanied Jamie Lee Witt, the head of the federal government's emergency response team, to catastrophic fires in Texas, but that wasn't true. He didn't accompany Mr. Witt and he didn't go to those fires. He made it up. It wasn't true.

Television commentator Morton Kondracke says Al Gore suffers from a Forrest Gump complex.

The New York Times quotes a professor of psychology in saying that Al Gore's record is "like the false memory syndrome where people end up believing that they were abducted by aliens."

The head of the California Democratic Party says that he cannot explain Al Gore's behavior because he is not a "psychiatrist."

The Washington Post quotes a veteran democrat as saying that Al Gore's record is "dangerous because it reinforces a dangerous perception that Gore is just another arrogant politician and we have 8 more years of lies ahead of us."

Former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley asked Al Gore at a New Hampshire debate "Why should we believe you will tell the truth as President if you don't tell the truth as a candidate?" Why indeed? In matters large and matters small, in matters three decades old and three days old, Al Gore has not told the truth as a Senator, as a Vice President, as a nominee for President. Al Gore has not told the truth.

In front of 50 million Americans in the first presidential debate on at least six separate matters, Al Gore did not tell the truth. If there is one thing certain about Campaign 2000 it's that you cannot trust Al Gore. You simply cannot trust Al Gore.

Ti-Guy said...

Nice cut 'n paste, anony-plagiarist. And Christ...from the retarded albino, to boot.

These anony-trolls must get together often to engage in daisy-chain fellatio, considering how much they feed off each other.

Anonymous said...

God, the idiocy that you retards put people through, wasting other people's money, time and effort.

Like the whole moronic race-based job quota system whereby everybody had to inventory their employees, and then go hire some unqualified minorities when there weren't enough on the list.

Don't forget, Al Gore is getting RICH on this scam. No conflict of interest here. And you suckers just like up for it.

Ti-Guy said...

And you suckers just like up for it.

What does this mean?

I'm not buying into anything. I just find the hysteria from the Right to be asthonishing and quite telling...

It's like you want everyone to disagree with you out of sheer spite. Well, you just might get your wish.

Anonymous said...

6VTnbu Your blog is great. Articles is interesting!

Anonymous said...

b1HWi8 Nice Article.

Anonymous said...

Hello all!

Anonymous said...

Magnific!

Anonymous said...

Nice Article.